Walter Benjamin |Â Â At the center of this exhibition is man. Present-day man; a reduced man, therefore, chilled in a chilly environment. Since, however, this is the only one we have, it is in our interest to know him. He is subjected to tests, examinations. What emerges is this: Weird Dude Energy (WDE), a layering of men, a group perspective on masculinity.

Wilde, Oscar | Â Â Â Â But is WDE, as a meme/concept, actually on display in this show, or only in theÂ title and statement? Is GDBD curating a show of WDE, or instead the passion ofÂ oneâ€™s friends? Thereâ€™s crossover, and it may all be equalâ€”those passions are the fascinating things IRL anyway. For me, the highlight was Andrew Mausert-Mooney & Nicholas Wylieâ€™s performance of foot washing, massage, andÂ chantingÂ of â€œPoor Unfortunate Soulsâ€ from The Little Mermaid. It had the dignity of aÂ ceremony, as well as its unreality, and combined the insincereÂ character of aÂ romantic movie with the wit and beauty that make such moviesÂ delightful to us. IsÂ insincerity really such a terrible thing?

Weiner, Anthony | Â Itâ€™s passion thatâ€™s a terrible thing, and letâ€™s just forget about online WDE. Letâ€™sÂ recalculate, letâ€™s talk this show. Now Andrew Doakâ€™s photo: I don’t know whereÂ that photograph came from. I donâ€™t know for sure whatâ€™s in it. Â I donâ€™t know forÂ sure if it was manipulated. And Iâ€™m going to get to the firm bottom of that.

Eagleton, Terry | Â Â Â Donâ€™t know Doak? Itâ€™s a self-portrait as John Belushiâ€™s character in AnimalÂ House, from the artistâ€™s ongoing portraiture project. There are several orphaned pieces in WDE, but Iâ€™ll admit that this one does suffer the most for it. Oli Rodriguezâ€™s photographic portrait integrates well with the other work, evenÂ though it is de-linked from the S&M series itâ€™s part of. The problem is, what weÂ consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. We buy anÂ experience like we can pick up a GBDB beer coozie ($2.00 at the opening).

Immanuel, Kant | Â Â Â Sure, thereâ€™s no doubt that all knowledge begins with experience. Thatâ€™s why IÂ bought three. But reading about the Weird Dude Energy Tumblr that was theÂ inspiration for the show, I learned two things on the Hyperallergic comment thread: first, apparently no one reads my books anymore; and second, â€œYoungÂ people’s ideas about whatever is cool can have a conversation with contemporaryÂ art.â€ If you canâ€™t deal with merch and memes, fine, how about Mike Reaâ€™sÂ virtuosic wood installation: jail cell/microphone/and, inevitably, glory hole? OutÂ of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

Rahm, Emanuel | Â Â Â Fucking retarded. Take your fucking tampon out and tell me what you have toÂ say. Best was Ivan Lozanoâ€™s installation of glowing blue hands on poles. ItÂ reminds me of when I sliced off my finger working at Arbyâ€™s, went swimming in Lake Michigan, and got gangrene. Thatâ€™s when I decided to become king ofÂ Chicago. Lozano fucked up his hand and made some casts based on not beingÂ able to move. Same idea, different goal. You should never let a serious crisis goÂ to waste.

Derrida, Jacques | Â Â Â Can we not talk about biography, please? Stick to the work! Look at how theÂ handsâ€™ blue glow syncs with Zak Arctanderâ€™s red tinted photo of the young man in a Vans cap, shown from his chest up. Whatever precautions you take so the photograph will look like this or that, there comes a moment when thatÂ photograph surprises you. Itâ€™s the other’s gaze that wins out and decidesâ€”whichÂ Arctander must be thinking about because look, he made sure the manâ€™s eyes areÂ covered by his cap! Rrose, with your own compromised intuitions, what did youÂ like?

Duchamp, Marcel | Â Â I just likeâ€”breathing. Itâ€™s so necessary that I donâ€™t question it.

Umberto, Eco | Â Â Â Â Â You are odd. Weird, I mean; but then, itâ€™s only petty men who seem normal.Â Didnâ€™t you like Alex Gartelmannâ€™s limp aluminum baseball bat, bent over a wooden peg? A mash-up of your own readymades and an â€˜80s sculptural phallus, a strong piece with good position.

Duchamp, Marcel | Â I donâ€™t believe in art, I believe in artists and the most interesting thing aboutÂ artists is how they live. All this twaddle are pieces of a chess game calledÂ language.

Eco, Umberto | Â Â Â Â Â Perhapsâ€¦. Maybe Iâ€™mâ€”maybe all this is not as wise as it likes to think it is. And if Jacquesâ€™s right about epistemic plurality, is this some eternal zugzwang, asÂ you chess people say? Itâ€™s true that the most interesting letters I receive are from people in the Midwest, people like the lone figure in John Operaâ€™s lovely, desolate Wisconsin landscape. So letâ€™s turn to their official sources instead!

Newcity Art (B. Stabler)| A variety of manly tensions are borne out by the juxtapositions in the group show â€œWeird Dude Energy.â€ In the end, thereâ€™s just nothing that says “competence” like a great curatorial concept enjoyably, even suavely, executed.

Jason Foumberg | Â Â Â Weird Dude Energy, a concept and an exhibition, probes the unkempt desires ofÂ men. Â You know how guys act when theyâ€™re all together, without womenÂ around? Â This show amplifies that vibe with work from 17 male artists.

James Pepper Kelly likes words, images, and the plants in his apartment. He serves as Managing Director of Filter Photo and is studying to be a pataphysicist. For a little while, back in the early â€˜00s, he was really good at Ms. Pac-man.Â

Chicago Artist Writers is a platform that asks young studio artists and art workers to write traditional and experimental criticism that serves under-represented arts programming in Chicago. CAW was founded by Jason Lazarus and Sofia Leiby in 2012. This is our first guest post on Bad at Sports.Â www.chicagoartistwriters.com

Chicago Artist Writers hosted a workshop with Lori Waxman at Gallery 400 on March 14, 2013. The following is an attempt to collect some of the many illuminating moments of her two-hour lecture and Q&A session.

â€œToday Iâ€™m going to talk about a lot of forms of art criticism that donâ€™t actually exist — yet.â€

Lori Waxman has her feet in two critical worlds. As a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, she takes on the role of a traditional art critic: she has a large audience, keeps her distance from the artist and organizers of the exhibitions she covers, and maintains an objective viewpoint. In contrast, her personal project 60 Wrd/Min Art Critic takes a more experimental approach. Â The public is invited to come with their work for a review written by Lori live, in person, with a secondary monitor displaying her writing process as it evolves. The project has been featured numerous times domestically and most recently at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany.

Lori posited that criticism has largely not changed much since its first appearance with Diderotâ€™s reviews of the Paris Salon of 1765, and the writing that we see in major outlets like the Tribune or Artforum holds the same basic values of that style to this day. This default approach to art criticism doesn’t reflect the drastic changes in art and technologyâ€™s influence on the contemporary conversation as much as it could.

She used Documenta as a case in pointâ€“-it embodied a sprawling, time-intensive experience for the viewer, and the critical responses to it suffered as their structuring was inadequate to cover the exhibitionâ€™s curatorial conceits. Critics who were only able to visit 3-5 days and print 1000 words were ill equipped to critique the event in its totality. â€œWho goes to NYC for a weekend, and tries to see everything, and if they canâ€™t, itâ€™s New Yorkâ€™s fault?â€ Lori asked. She used Dieter Roelstraeteâ€™s review of the Documenta in Artforum as one example; one of his main critiques was that it had too much going on. Similarly, Roberta Smithâ€™s review in the New York Times was schizophrenic, unable to deal with the scope of the massive three-month undertaking. Lori suggested that despite the stubborn precedent of â€œobjective distanceâ€ in traditional criticism, she herself might be the best critic of Documenta, having spent her entire summer there.

Platforms for alternatives to the traditional model exist in small handfuls but some are promising. Lori noted that online versions of specialty magazines like Artforum fail to leverage the malleability of the web and stick to the values and format of their print counterparts. Websites like hyperallergic, the former artnet.com, and temporaryartreview.com (which covers cities off the major art map) may increase turnaround time and coverage of lesser-known projects, but again resist transforming the dynamic of the critical approach itself. Â Triple Canopy is a capable platform, for not only its scholarship but, in the case of Davidâ€™s Levineâ€™s take on the dissolution of the Rothko estate, its willingness to embrace an insiderâ€™s view at the sacrifice of traditional objectivity. Â Art Fag City features critical writing but is bolstered most importantly by the active comments sections as a new center of gravity in critical writing. Â This very blog (the Bad at Sports blog) also embraces the more diaristic, personality-driven, multi-tangential style of critical reflection over objectively toned assessment. Â In the early 2000s, Lori contributed to Fucking Good Art, a feverishly produced zine spearheaded by Pedro Velez and Michael Bulka. Critics would go out to openings, type up reviews as soon as they were sober (or not), and photocopy and distribute the zine for free the next day. The reviews, sometimes nasty and anonymous, were the main way apartment spaces were getting critical feedback.

Lori wondered if models like Facebook and Twitter could be used seriously as venues for criticism instead of flippantly; these platforms have a multi-directionality that could support a more nimble and relevant conversation to artwork being produced. Â In addition, their immediacy has the potential to be paradigm shifting–what happens if something is written in front of/within the work? â€œGonzoâ€ reviews — long form, unedited stream of consciousness reviews — also have yet to be fully realized in art criticism.

Perhaps criticism that leans towards more relational and embodied writing is called for by today’s art practices. Â Lori suggested â€œembedded criticismâ€ â€“ a term borrowed from journalism, in which journalists are â€œembeddedâ€ with soldiers â€“ as a term for art writing that celebrates, rather than discourages, the subjective experience in order to strike a critical observation. In her piece Practicing Trio A in the Spring 2012 issue of October, Julia Brian Wilson spoke about taking a class with Yvonne Rainer in which she learned how to perform Rainerâ€™s seminal The Mind Is a Muscle, Part I (Trio A) from 1973, and how this direct involvement in the piece changed her mind about it. Hannah Higgins is well known as a scholar and writer about Fluxus in part because of her upbringing in a canonical Fluxus household; her embeddedness creates a unique opportunity for scholarship and complexity. Â Later, during the Q&A, an audience member suggested Kathy Acker as an additional example of someone who writes about artwork while having a close relationship to it.

Art writing authored from a fictional perspective or persona is another area ripe for exploration. Lynn Tillman has written fiction at the artist’s request (perhaps skewing its definition as “criticism,” but an example of a new form of art writing nonetheless). Her short story â€œMadame Realism Lies Hereâ€ from 2002 is composed from the perspective of a woman who dreams she has turned into a Jeff Koons sculpture, experiencing life in a weird and grotesque way that mimics Koons’ work. Tillmanâ€™s series TV Tales about Barbara Kruger from 1976 also is another example. As well, we can look to novelists: Gertrude Stein wrote in a “cubist” style, coming out of a deep experience with cubist painting. This kind of art writing acts as an analog to the work itself. Stein’s unique, unexpected way of using language sidesteps â€œInternational Art Englishâ€ altogether: it doesn’t even require a dictionary. One can hold up a piece of hers in front of a painting and see how they work together. The Family Fang, a novel by Kevin Wilson, consists of a fictional narrative about a family of performance artists. Philadelphia artist Jayson Mussonâ€™s satirical comedy as Hennessy Youngman occasionally offers thoughtful and to the point responses to art, although Lori noted that Youngman can be surprisingly conservative â€“ here she reminded us that a new form doesnâ€™t necessarily mean a radical idea, as form and content are extricable. But an outside-the-art-world persona like Mussonâ€™s can make it easier to call the emperor naked. Another example brought up by the audience was artist Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, who produced a collection of erotic fiction about James Franco.

Lori stressed that to write about museums and commercial galleries is to write about art that has already been filtered and processed, versus writing about experimental spaces showing lesser-known artists who have yet to be critically acknowledged. When writing about the latter spaces, one should remember that criticism of ephemeral or emerging practices may be the only record that exists, and so one must be intentional as his or her writing will eventually become historical fact. â€œSome dogged art historian in 20 years will rely on these reviews, and they will quote [them]; and if you got it wrong and weird, theyâ€™re going to think thatâ€™s what happened.â€ For this reason, she also suggested inventing a way to respond to a work instead of writing something explicitly negative.

Television shows such as Work of Art and School of Saatchi, whether we like them or not, are emergent examples of new forms of art criticism. Â While only persisting for four episodes, BBCâ€™s School of Saatchi featured six artists, asked them to make interesting commissions, and gave them a decent amount of time and money to do so. The show rendered the actual process of making contemporary art transparent, â€œand was surprisingly accessible and intelligent.â€ After the work is completed, a good fifteen minutes of each hour-long show is devoted to serious discussion of the artwork that is then communicated to the artists. The judgesâ€™ remarks are often off the cuff and funny, speaking with authority but sometimes contradicting one another. Their multiple voices created a critical environment similar to a class critique. Bravoâ€™s Work of Art, in contrast, equated art with other subjects like cooking or getting married. Artists were given $100 and 24 hours to make a series of asinine projects. Notable, however, was the involvement of Jerry Saltz, the most recognizable critic in the U.S. Â Most of the criticism on the show was demeaning, puerile, dumb and one-liner; criticism was consistently of the lowest-common-denominator variety. Yet, Lori said, Work of Art nevertheless represents one of the ways that art is being thought about today by the general publicâ€”and perhaps even some parts of the art world; this show is part of the publicâ€™s access to the art world, and it is sadly misrepresentative.

Some of Loriâ€™s more experimental ideasâ€”stolen, she willingly admitted, from her students at SAICâ€”included gif criticism (what can a gif do that words canâ€™t?) or criticism using image combinations (like on tumblr). During the Q&A, the audience pitched in: we suggested hyperlink criticism â€“ a review composed entirely of links, in line with the ways we read, think and click; another participant proposed a review composed over Skype, where one person views the exhibition at home, one in the museum, highlighting the differences; or a (live/recorded) performance positioned as a review. Does criticism need to be site specific to the work â€“ like the precedent of dances that directly respond to artwork?

If criticism can be art and vice versa, how can one be sure these forms donâ€™t stray too close to art and too far from criticism? Where is that line placed and is it important? Lori pointed out that studio experience might be valuable for a critic, â€œand who thinks criticism is so objective anyway?â€ 60 Wrd/Min Art Critic attempts to take some of the agency that the art critic normally assumes away, and to see what happens when itâ€™s given to the artist him or herself. The agency Lori gives up is the ability to choose who and what she writes about. But if this critical agency we assume is important is taken away from the critic, can something of substance still materialize? What happens if criticism is available for the asking? Is it still interesting, critical?

Another participant asked Lori about What Happened to Art Criticism, the 2003 panel discussion and book in which Jim Elkins and others complained that the majority of art criticism being written today is “descriptive.” Lori responded that she believes there’s no such thing as a truly factual description” of something. She pointed out that one can’t recreate a painting backwards from a description, no matter how detailed or “straightforward” it is. A good piece of description, she noted, can do “almost anything.” One can’t have criticism without description; and in shorter lengths, these combinations can be powerful — look at the New Yorker’s 100 word reviews of exhibitions in the Goings On section.

An audience member asked if art history helps or hurts art criticism. “If you love October, you should stay in art history and not try to be an art critic,” Lori responded. Most critics come from art, not art history, and there’s “plenty to make of that, in terms of experience and commitment.” She relayed the under-discussed fact that most of the notable art critics working today do not have art history degrees. Peter Schjeldahl started out as a poet; Saltz was a painter and truck driver; Robert Storr and Matthew Collings trained as painters.

How about artists criticizing their own artwork as an interesting new form of art criticism? Lori responded with an anecdote from her husband, the artist Michael Rakowitz, who had recently been part of a discussion in which the moderator complained afterward that the panelâ€™s artists hadnâ€™t talked more about their work’s problems. Her husband countered that he didn’t know of a professional artist who would do that, that it’s not their job: let the critics take issue, and the artists deal with the problems in their own way. One takeaway for us is that the space for self-criticism in between the artist statement and the art review is ripe for experimentation.

We left thinking about the burgeoning potency of crowd-sourced criticism.Â Mimicking the current form of value-production bolstered by the Internet, where value is dispersed into tallies, â€œaggregate,â€ rhizomatic or crowd-sourced criticism may be starting to replace the good old New York Times review. One audience member wondered if all types of feedback to an artwork could be located in a single place, including documentation, short and long reviews, responses on Twitter, Facebook, etc.? Although Google might seem good for this on its own, it isn’t organized: someone should take advantage of this opportunity for a new start-up.

We found this sentiment the driving force of Loriâ€™s presentationâ€“an implicit and collective call to action:

â€œTechnology has changed and art has changed, and that should be radically impacting the kind of art criticism that we write, how it gets published, how it gets received and who we write it for, and how it gets commented on.â€

Chicago Artist Writers is a platform that asks young studio artists and art workers to write traditional and experimental criticism that serves under-represented arts programming in Chicago. CAW was founded by Jason Lazarus and Sofia Leiby in 2012. This is our first guest post on Bad at Sports.Â www.chicagoartistwriters.com

Six months earlier, the proprietors of Chicago’s New Capital Projects, Ben Foch and Chelsea Culp, began a twenty-five day round-the-clock closing event for their gallery. Foch and Culp had, from the outset, planned a limited, two-year run of public exhibitions at their venue. And having reached the end of their finite schedule they threw open the doors to everyone interested in one last collaborative endeavor entitled “24HRS/25DAYS.” Whither came the funding for such a spectacle? In 2011, the Propeller Fund announced that Foch and Culp were recipients of a 6000 USD award.

Rather than being a survey of contemporary programming, this installment of Chicago Art in Pictures is a historical offering. If New Capital Projects’ success (and it was a success) seemed contingent upon its engagement with artists, its monetary subsidization, and its relatively brief public existence, then maybe too it was the case that only an informal, ethical consensus allowed for a momentary sort of Utopia within the city’s crumbling West Side.

While planning what might be possible for the future, it’s helpful to remember what has worked in the past. And so, some of the activity surrounding New Capital Projects in the year 2012 is suggested by the imagery below. A full schedule for “24HRS/25DAYS” is still available at New Capital Projects’ website. All artwork copyright original artists; photography copyright Paul Germanos.